DickensMacmillan and Company, 1882 - 224 pages |
Common terms and phrases
actor admirable afterwards already altogether American artist become Bleak House chapter character Charles Dickens charm Christmas books Christmas Numbers Circumlocution Office close comic course David Copperfield declared delightful described Dombey Dombey and Son doubt earlier effect English excitement fancy favourite feeling fiction Forster Gad's Hill Gad's Hill Place genius grotesque hand heart Household Words humour imagination interest journal kind kindly labour later least Leigh less letters literary literature Little Dorrit London Lord Macready manner Martin Chuzzlewit master ment mind narrative nature never Nicholas Nickleby night novel novelist occasionally Old Curiosity Shop Oliver Twist paper passage pathos personages Pickwick Pickwick Papers picture play pleasant poor popular portrait readers readings satire scenes seems Sketches by Boz Smollett spirit story Street success taken Thackeray theatre theatrical things thought tion true truth whole Wilkie Collins writing written wrote young
Popular passages
Page 117 - This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart...
Page 98 - In the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor, we would tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast...
Page 158 - Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London — now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads — seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.
Page 211 - Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition.
Page 163 - I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read ' David Copperfield ' again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe.
Page 42 - She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell, was dead. Her little bird — a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed — was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless for ever.
Page 117 - ... acquaintance; which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give — who does not often give — the warning, " Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!
Page 118 - Shop first dawned on the genius of its creator. No character in prose fiction was a greater favourite with Landor. He thought that, upon her, Juliet might for a moment have turned her eyes from Romeo, and that Desdemona might have taken her hair-breadth escapes to heart, so interesting and pathetic did she seem to him; and when, some years later...
Page 181 - I write) and they reflect and refract in all kinds of ways the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up among the branches of the trees ; and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in, at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most delicious.
Page 120 - He no more thought, God forgive him! that the admired original would ever be charged with the imaginary vices of the fictitious creature, than he has himself ever thought of charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello, on the innocent Academy model who sat for lago's leg in the picture.